Sean Russell (1) (1952–)

I'd read Moontide and Magic Rise a few years ago, and it was so original, so innovative and rich that it blew me away. I'd enjoyed it immensely and I thought this earlier duology would be a good read too. But I was disappointed.

While the setting was somewhat fresh, the novel was too impersonal and played safe to achieve anything truly memorable. It feels unpolished and lacks direction, with so many characters yet none of them being in the least fleshed out or even followed closely to care about. They were mostly living clichés, speaking and acting in extremely predictable manners that it felt like a chore to read the book to its end.

Subplots were few for a novel of such length and and they lacked impact. The major threat of the duology never felt important because there was no one to really care about.

I didn't enjoy it. Go read Sean Russell's Moontide and Magic Rise instead. It's a brilliant work and better than most fantasy novels out there.… (mais)

Taken together as a whole, this duology is a winner. It is a long, slow burn in a created world of very accessible people and politics.

Readers in search of plentiful action and Star Wars-scale intrigue will be disappointed, however; focus is constrained mostly to small stages within the greater conflict to tell the story with much weight put upon conversations, asides, and the trappings of civilization themselves. In many ways, this is similar to Arkady Martine's 2019 masterpiece, "A Memory Called Empire." The complex denouement here went in unexpected directions as well, making the steps that follow the military climax as significant and dicey as the war itself.

The character developments of the many central cast are a fractal dance, as they affect one another's orbits and deflect into new patterns. The female characters are constrained to behave in ways available to them in their culture but still play dynamic roles with their own agendas: nice. Best of all for me was that individual choice, decisions made and followed, supersedes notions of fate and destiny throughout. It was easy to become invested in several of the characters (i.e., Komawara, for the win!) and therefore engaged through all the little stops and starts of the overall flow.… (mais)

This is a brilliant, well-written novel. Deft world-building, rich characters, a nicely complex plot interweaving a couple of storylines: Russell serves up an East Asian-based fantasy world of political intrigue, ancient legacies catalyzed to reignite, spiritual Orders that may or may not be playing fair....and published a decade and a half before "Avatar: The Last Airbender" aired. This book may well have been a significant influence on the latter, now that I think on it. This is NOT an action-packed extravaganza of frenetic action, however; to compare to Asian films, "The Initiate Brother" is more akin to "Red Cliff" than "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," though it smacks of both. I found this book hard to put down and several characters very much folks I'd like to meet.

There are a couple of drawbacks, though, greatest of which is that this novel is not a stand-alone. The first volume of a duology, it very much ends on a bated breath with everything in the balance. A small complaint, that may be put to the lie in the second volume, is that while the female characters are brilliant and dynamic, they simply aren't on stage enough. We'll have to see about that, then. I do have to thank my friend Martin for recommending this book over and over until I picked it up; thanks, Martin!… (mais)